


Material Process

by Eva



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Forced to Act Against His Will, M/M, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg discovers what Mycroft knows: there's always more to learn.  Psychic AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*********

“Why do you go to church?”

Greg turned, surprised, to meet the cold, piercing gaze of a young man, little more than a kid for all he was so tall. His eyes looked ghostly pale in his thin, white face, under a tangle of black curls.

“Do I know you?” he asked, pausing there on the street. It was late enough that he shouldn’t stay; Annie would be waiting up for him. Besides, it was cold, as a proper December should be, with a promise of frost hanging in the chill air.

“Churches don’t approve of the likes of you,” the kid said, looking Greg up and down. “God’s Accursed is the nicest name I’ve heard for you.”

Witches, warlocks, cursed, psychics. Greg kept his expression neutral. “You are aware that saying that’s slander, Mister...?”

“Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.” He didn’t bother with the nicety of holding out his hand to shake. “And it can’t be slander if it’s true.”

“You’ll have a hell of a time proving it,” Greg said calmly. “And I’ll enjoy collecting a sum fit for a second honeymoon with the wife. Let’s head on down to the Yard and--”

“You’ve done well to hide it from them for so long,” Holmes interrupted. “I imagine going to church and working for the Metropolitan Police has stood you in good stead against any number of doubts your family, friends, or colleagues may have had. Good. Thank you for answering my question.”

“Look, Mr. Holmes?” Greg tried again, resisting the urge to sigh heavily. “If you’re done, I’d like to go home--”

“I’m not done, or rather, finished,” Holmes said, face twitching into something that resembled a smile. “This may seem like a clumsy attempt at entrapment, but I would like to engage your services.”

Greg’s jaw was hanging. “You want to what?”

“If you wouldn’t mind terribly taking a look at my aura, I have reason to believe that an enemy has put some sort of tracking, ah, thing, on me,” Holmes said, looking sour at not having the words to describe his supposed predicament. “I know that he is psychic, and I can’t shake him at present. I’d like to. I can offer you a small payment, and also promise not to mention your abilities to your superiors.”

Greg stared at him. “Well, considering my superiors--”

“Are at New Scotland Yard and you’ve already offered to take me there, yes, I’m not offering much,” Holmes said impatiently. “But considering I have a file here from the Home Office with your name on it--”

Greg’s vision went white briefly, as the git pulled a folder from his coat and started paging through it, revealing, among other things, more than one photo of Greg Lestrade. It was probably still a ruse, because no one would bring a file like that out into the open--

“If you care to research anything about the name Holmes, you’ll find yourself in more trouble with the Home Office than this file alone promises,” Holmes said easily, and even had the temerity to smile at him. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Look at me, Lestrade. I’m unsensitive. I understand psychics can see that clearly.”

And they could. A psychic’s aura, the energy surrounding their physical form, was larger; it streamed out from the solar plexus and formed, in a vague sort of colour, a similarly vaguely winged shape behind them. Most psychics saw these as wings as children, learning that few people had them and only those people could see them in others. In unsensitives, people without that extra aural energy, auras tended to stick closer to the skin, an almost colourless signature that rarely extended an inch beyond the skin.

In Holmes’ case, it was very faintly blue-green, a strange, oceanic colour, with a dark shadow near the right shoulder. The shadow being the psychic tracker which he had already deduced.

“I can’t undo something a psychic has done to me by myself. I need help. And considering my enemy will remain at large, I’ll need to keep the person who has helped me at large, don’t you think?”

“Why don’t we head back into the church and pray for your soul?” Greg asked sourly, reaching out to grab the file. Holmes pulled it back, but not very far, and Greg was able to get ahold of it. “You can head out through the gardens, too. If you’re being followed, as you implied.”

Holmes smiled, honestly this time, and let Greg take the file. They walked in together, Holmes watching Greg with some interest as he led the way to a pew to sit and kneel.

“Are you really praying?” he murmured, sounding incredibly amused.

“Concentrating,” Greg snapped, keeping his eyes closed. He didn’t have to see Holmes’ aura to be able to deal with this. 

Greg’s aura was a bright silver, almost invisible in bright sunlight but for how it shone. At forty years of age, it was no longer a comfortable fluff about the shoulders, or even an arched span. It streamed out behind him, reaching to either side, though he could bring each wing around to create a sort of circle around himself. He did so now, feeling the odd, warm whisper of the pews as he moved them, the gentle, lingering scent of incense warming them and allowing his mind to envision their movement more easily.

He didn’t go to the church to worship; Greg wasn’t Catholic, nor was anyone in his family. But the Latin mass felt like a warm spring rain on each reaching wing, and the choir was a bright blast of sunlight. Oddly, real rain felt like white noise in his wings, and sunlight, well. Sunlight felt like a cleansing flame, and he concentrated on that feeling now, trying to reignite the memory in his wings.

It was an ability he hadn’t known anyone else to possess. The white-bright heat ignited, beginning in his solar plexus and flaring out along each curved wing, making him jerk in pain and hit his forehead on his folded hands, stationed between his head and the pew in front of them. He felt the heat pass into Holmes’ aura, making it expand for a split second, in which Holmes gasped. The shadow resisted, but succumbed in the next moment.

Greg let the heat go, struggling to maintain even breaths even as a dull, nagging cold settled into his aura. But that was why he’d chosen the church; it wouldn’t take long for him to recover enough to get home. And Mr. Holmes would not only lose his psychic tracker, but find himself feeling healthier, stronger, and more clear-headed than he’d felt in ages, Greg was sure.

Holmes stood up slowly, staring around the church with an oddly perplexed expression before he suddenly whirled around and stalked off. Greg watched him from the corner of his eye, still kneeling, pleased that he left the file on the seat of the pew where Greg had placed it.

*********

Sitting in the back of the black car, Greg fumed quietly at himself for thinking that would have been the end of it.

The woman next to him hadn’t bothered to introduce herself; she’d simply requested that he come along for a discussion about Sherlock Holmes, and had flashed a card with the insignia of the Security Service. He hadn’t even got as far as the train station before she was there, her small but powerful purple aura arching delicately above her shoulders. There was a strength in it Greg didn’t dare work against; he’d been controlled psychically only once before in his life, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience--and he had a feeling that there was more than just psychic ability backing her up. A look at the driver had confirmed it: unsensitive, but built like a lorry.

Darker auras, like hers, usually worked best with the material world. Lighter auras, like his own, worked best with energy. But Greg had a feeling, watching her from the corner of his eye, that there she was probably an unusual sort of psychic. The deep, velvety coolness of her aura felt an awful lot like the shadow on Sherlock had.

The file Sherlock had given him was almost burning a hole in his jacket. “So is he a terrorist?” Greg asked bluntly, annoyed by the silence--and worse than that, by the way she hadn’t looked up in the last ten minutes from her phone.

“Not yet,” she murmured, as if speaking to herself. “No, Inspector, but he is on a very particular watch list.”

“He says you’re his enemy,” Greg said, testing the waters further.

“No, that would be my boss,” she told him, meeting his gaze at last with a gently sarcastic smile. “We’re on our way to meet him.”

Greg sighed. “Right. But this is about Sherlock Holmes, and not me?”

“It only concerns you inasmuch as to how you are connected to Sherlock Holmes,” she said, turning her attention back to her phone. But there was steel in her voice as she added, “And as to how you broke my connection to him.”

“Fuck,” Greg muttered, looking out the window.

*********

The building was huge, white, and gorgeous. Greg tried to get some sort of idea as to what it was called; he knew approximately where they were, so if he got out of this intact, he’d be able to find it again. It was anyone’s guess if he’d want to.

The door opened and the driver said in a smooth, deep voice, “Inspector.”

“Get out,” the woman added helpfully. Greg climbed out slowly, still trying to take in as many details as he could, and winced at the accidental brush of his aura to hers: marble, smooth and cool, under running water, and a hint of chimes. Beautiful, but not exactly welcome. Curiously, she didn’t seem to notice.

The woman walked ahead, tapping on her phone again, leading the way without looking. Greg considered slinking back into the car, but the driver shut the door and nodded after her meaningfully when Greg looked at him, unable to keep the sick expression from his face.

“Inspector,” the woman called sharply. “We’re expected.”

The hall was long, dark, and quiet. Silent, almost, but for their footsteps. The woman stopped abruptly at a closed door and squared her shoulders, tucking her wings more securely to her body--she was nervous, Greg realised with a sinking sort of fear. She scared him, and she was nervous.

Before she could knock, a mild, pleasant man’s voice called, “Come in.”

It was a large, well-lit room, with tall bookshelves and heavy wooden furniture; a comforting sort of room for all its obvious marks of affluence. Greg’s eyes flitted over it quickly, noting one other exit and the high, short windows, his subconscious filing the details with the ease of long practice as he looked to the man smiling at him from a heavy, well-used desk.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” the man said, and his eyes, a strange blue that seemed dark and pale at once, seemed to be more amused than anything. “Care to give me back my file?”

Greg almost crushed it, bringing his arms closer to himself. He’d had it neatly tucked into a slit in the lining and he knew there was no way this man could see it. 

With a sigh, the man stood, his tall, thin frame lacking menace--but that was provided in spades as the movement brought his aura into view. He’d had the audacity to tuck his wings back through the wall, with enough light shining down that Greg hadn’t the chance to see them until now: immense, crystalline, glacier-blue, and curling around now, easily dwarfing Greg’s. He’d never seen anything like them and knew his mouth was hanging open as he stared, but again, there was nothing he could do about it.

“All of my files are marked with my personal signature,” the man explained patiently. “Please return it to me.” And he tapped the desk in front of him with a pale, languid hand.

Greg pulled it from his coat slowly. “You put this together?”

The man smiled. “Do you doubt it?” His wings curled closer, and Greg shivered in spite of himself.

“He also erased my tracker from Sherlock, sir,” the woman said, her voice subdued. Greg almost jumped; he’d forgotten she was there.

“And now he’s on the loose again,” the man said, his smile becoming sharper. “Whatever are we to do with you, Inspector?”

“Why are you tracking him?” Greg burst out, still clutching the file. “How are you tracking him? It’s next to bloody impossible to affect an unsensitive’s aura!”

“Next to impossible, meaning not impossible,” the man said, raising an eyebrow. “Anthea, thank you. I will continue my conversation with the Inspector, but you needn’t stay.”

“Sir,” she said, her voice wooden.

“I expect you to find Sherlock tomorrow, however,” he added, a touch colder. “I appreciate that he is difficult, and that you couldn’t plan for the Inspector’s intervention, but twenty-four hours should be sufficient for a minor setback such as this.”

“Understood,” she said, and hurried out. Her face was grim as she passed, but she exuded a pure, iron determination that made Greg’s mouth twist, though he was tasting it with his wings.

When the door had closed again behind her, the man sighed again. “She’s far more valuable to me than she knows. If it will allow you feel more at ease, Inspector, let me introduce himself. Mycroft Holmes.”

Greg whipped his head back to stare at him. “Holmes? What, you’re Sherlock’s--” he paused, looking Mycroft up and down. “Brother?”

“There’s no need to sound so surprised,” Mycroft chided, and gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “Please, have a seat. And give me my file back, thank you so very much.”

Still with his wings tucked as close to himself as he could get, Greg moved slowly forward, not wanting to give the file up but knowing he had no choice. With a bitter glance at it, he tossed it onto the desk, sitting gingerly on the chair.

Mycroft flipped it open, looking through the pages casually. “So you’ve erased the tracker Anthea laboured to plant on him. There is no mention at all of such an ability in your file.”

“I wasn’t aware you could track an unsensitive, particularly when you aren’t that skilled at energy manipulation,” Greg countered.

Mycroft’s smile was bright and false. “Ah, but Anthea has been taking lessons. Surely you’re aware of the material process?”

Greg shifted uncomfortably. It was an idea, one that he subscribed to, even, that how a psychic thought about their aura could affect what they could do with their aura. It took a considerable amount of practice, but it was a way to get more control over one’s own aura, beyond simply making it less volatile.

Mycroft wasn’t finished. “So perhaps you might be interested in giving lessons. An ability like yours, well. Could be useful.”

“Not interested,” Greg said flatly, refusing to shrink from the consequences.

There were few enough psychics now that the panic of the early seventies seemed alien, though there was no doubt that a few determined individuals had done their best to bring several nations’ governments to ruin. Other plots had come to light here and there, with just enough regularity that no one ever quite trusted a known psychic. Certainly not to be a policeman. Hardly enough to be a citizen--there were more than a few nations that would imprison their psychics, or execute them outright. The laws on the books in the UK were fairly open to interpretation.

Saying no to this man, to the Home Office, could mean his job, and it could also mean his freedom or his life.

Mycroft was quiet, watching him carefully. Greg shifted again, impatient now.

"Well?" he asked finally. "Aren't you supposed to threaten me now?"

"Am I?" Mycroft sounded surprised. "I have my file back, Anthea has given an adequate reason for failing her exercise and will try again--"

"Her exercise?" Greg repeated incredulously.

"I hardly need psychic abilities to keep track of my brother, Inspector. I wanted to test Anthea's ability. She's coming along nicely," Mycroft added, smiling blandly. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in lessons yourself, as you seem so very opposed to giving them."

"This isn't about the Home Office," Greg said, his skin prickling. "You do this on your own. They don't even know about it, do they?"

"Bravo, Inspector," Mycroft said softly.

*********


	2. Chapter 2

*********

When the rain finally fell in those first cold hours of the night, Greg was barking orders at a few PCs and waving frantically to catch Sally Donovan’s attention. His sergeant had gone for coffee, at his request, but his shoulders were hunched defensively as he tried to shield his wings away from their suddenly volatile witness.

“Donovan!” he shouted, and met her halfway. The coffee was a balm for the body, but her presence was a balm for the soul--or rather, the aura.

“You all right, sir?” she asked, pressing one bare hand to his wrist. The sudden dampening of his sensitivity made Greg stumble, though he caught himself quickly enough. Like snapping a circuit open, or putting a hand out to silence a chime.

“He’s minutes from confessing, but I don’t think he was in it alone and I don’t think it was his idea.” Greg glared at their twenty-something year old male witness, who was still hyperventilating near the mouth of the alley. “He’s just screaming in there, endlessly.” It had scraped along his wings like jagged shards of ice.

“I can take over this bit, if you want to head home.” She rolled her eyes at his sour glare. “You can trust me, you know. That’s why you helped me get promoted?”

“But can I trust this lot to listen to you?” Greg said, and tried to rub at his eyes with his left hand before remembering, just before he hit himself, that there was a coffee cup in it. “Ah, Christ, there he goes.”

And their witness was gulping out his confession now to a sweet-faced PC whose tension was only revealed by the tightness of her shoulders. Sally’s fingers curled around his wrist. “Sir, you’re white as a ghost. It’s not going to help my authority or yours if you pass out on the street.”

He’d done a bit of that, back in the day--rumour had gone around that he was aneamic, of all things. Greg had blamed it on migraines and gotten a doctor, a psychic herself, to sign off on it. But he’d been able to control things well enough for promotion even before Sally, the second of only two asensitives Greg had come to know in his life, had joined his team.

It was stress, that’s what it was. Waiting for the other shoe to drop in that nasty Holmes situation he’d ended up in. Waiting for Annie to call from her mum’s, even though he knew she wasn’t there. He was exhausted. 

“I’ll head back to the office, then,” he said, and this time did hit himself in the face with the coffee cup.

He made it back to the car before noticing the shadow lounging behind it, much to his own chagrin--for taking so long to see it, and for recognising it as Sherlock Holmes. “I’ve had enough of you,” he snarled, moving to the open the door.

Sherlock moved easily to the passenger side and slid in before Greg could do more than sigh loudly. “You spoke to my brother.”

“Yeah, and you couldn’t have mentioned that it was your brother out to get you?” He was too tired to manage more than a glare.

Sherlock was quiet until he’d started the car and pulled out into the street. “I didn’t expect him to go after you. Your file indicated that you were benign.”

“Like a tumor?” Greg muttered, and rubbed at his head. “Why don’t you explain your thinking, then, while we take this little drive to the Yard.”

“I wanted to get away from his surveillance for a moment,” Sherlock said stiffly, turned away and staring out the window. The city rolled away, dark and wet, leaving them in a strange and modern sort of confessional. “There are things I wished to accomplish that I didn’t want him a part of, whether by mechanical or psychic means. I already knew of his work; he didn’t keep it a secret from me, and in return, I left it… I left it entirely to him.”

“The psychic world,” Greg clarified.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, the word a sigh of long-held resentment, possibly one that he didn’t even consciously acknowledge. “I looked into his files, because he had no reason to hide them from me; I had never shown interest in them. I thought you a likely candidate, because you were stated to be a manipulator of auras, although how the colour of one’s aura can indicate that--“

“Don’t stray,” Greg warned, easing to a stop at the intersection.

“I wanted his tracker erased, and I thought you the likeliest candidate. So I stole the file, tracked you down, tried to manipulate your justified anxiety, and ended up exciting my brother’s interest in your person. And I am sorry,” he ended, with feeling. He was still staring out the window. “I am very sorry.”

“Do you know what he does?” Greg asked, going for artful because he knew he couldn’t fake a casual interest.

Sherlock was silent for a long moment, long enough that Greg thought he wouldn’t answer. But he did. “My brother is the single most dangerous man in London, in the United Kingdom--probably the world. And that is because he is a psychic with the backing of a nation.” 

Greg said nothing, but the hairs were rising on the back of his neck. Sherlock continued, “He is the Crown’s psychic, Lestrade. He keeps track of all of you, all of the sensitives in the United Kingdom. Probably more than that, though I’ve yet to uncover those files. He knows all of you by name. He deems you benign or malignant, and directs those who might bring harm upon the populace to Baskerville. It is one of his chief duties, and there is no one who could do it so effectively as he does.”

“And, knowing this, you still sought me out,” Greg said, feeling a slow, bright, burning rage roiling in his gut, though an even greater fear was skating icily through his veins, counteracting it. He’d assumed Mycroft was working with the Home Office, his sensitivity unsuspected, and using his position to find psychics he could coax into his little lessons. 

“I didn’t think he would revenge himself on a third party,” Sherlock admitted a bit sourly, and Greg took a moment to pull to the side and park the car before he let loose.

“You are a bloody fucking idiot, do you know that?” he roared, slamming his hands on the wheel. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and that was just as infuriating as the rest. “You don’t know a damned thing about psychics, do you? Not a damned thing, not even if your brother is the king of them all!”

“The king,” Sherlock snorted, rolling his eyes, and Greg was going to strangle him.

“One: affecting an unsensitive’s aura is nearly impossible, but he’s figured out a way to do it,” he snapped, holding up one finger in front of Sherlock’s face. “Two: erasing that tracker, which should have been impossible to create, should have likewise been impossible to do, as the first hadn’t been done before!”

“What is the point of being psychic if you can’t affect unsensitives?” Sherlock demanded, and Greg turned away, because he was an officer of the Metropolitan Police Service and he would not murder a man, no matter how bloody irritating he was.

“I don’t know that there’s a point at all,” he said coldly, staring at the rain that was moving in slow, searching rivulets down the window. “I don’t care to know. What I do know is that you fucked about with something you didn’t understand, and you’re back again because you can’t leave it alone. Can you?” he demanded, turning back to Sherlock abruptly.

And Sherlock didn’t deny it. “So you are special, then? You’ve figured out how to do something he didn’t know how to do.”

“It’s amazing what a man can do when he thinks he’s cornered,” Greg said, and the weight of it suddenly landed on him, making him slump in his seat. “Get out of here. Stay away from me. Figure out another way to slip his surveillance--“

“I wanted to purchase heroin.”

That shut Greg up right quick, and he sat up straighter, staring at Sherlock in no small amount of surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“I meant to purchase heroin,” Sherlock said again, his face blank as a statue’s. “I’d been using for almost six months. He didn’t know--or, at least, he hadn’t confronted me about it yet. And then you erased the tracker, and I…” he smiled, a quick grimace of expression, before it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. “The craving was gone. The addiction, gone.”

“What?” Greg said, in a whisper, because he had to say something into the yawning silence between them, to put some words between himself and Sherlock’s cool, distant stare.

“I have never felt that I owed another person anything,” Sherlock said, and there was a rawness to his honesty now. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jumping. “Thank you.”

“Don’t,” Greg said, his skin crawling. This was not something he wanted in his file. “If it’s true, if it’s really--it was unintentional. I just meant to get rid of the tracker.”

Sherlock nodded, turning his suddenly pensively gaze away, before loosening his seatbelt and opening the door. “Nevertheless. Thank you, Lestrade,” he said, and darted out into the rain, the door slamming shut behind him.

*********

Anthea was there at his flat, standing with her back to the door, texting. Greg sighed deeply and stopped at the foot of steps leading up to the door. “The neighbours will talk.”

She shrugged and moved aside. “Tell them I’m your niece. It works for Mr. Holmes.”

“Yeah, right,” Greg said, moving to open the door. “You don’t get neighbours at secret supervillain hideouts.”

That earned him a smile, which didn’t relax him one iota. “Are you going to invite me in?” she asked, finishing up her text and looking up from the phone at last.

It was flirtatious, but Greg was on full alert, allowing his wings to extend and brush against her own. Again, she didn’t notice, and he could assess her mood more fully: determined. “What did he send you here for?” he asked, holding the door open a little wider.

Anthea stepped inside daintily, her heels striking the wooden floor in the foyer loudly. “To get you to change your mind, of course. Since we both know that’s not likely to happen, how about a cup of tea?”

“Cut the act,” Greg ordered, but he led the way to the kitchen anyway. The rain, striking against the dark windows, somehow made the house seem even quieter. 

“Make me a cup and I will,” she promised, sitting at the little table with all appearance of patience.

And so Greg prepared the tea, at two in the morning, and set out a mug for himself and Anthea, whose wings were still curled around her shoulders, far more relaxed than his own. He watched her look around, taking in the kitchen with an appraising air, before she finally spoke again.

“You could demand a salary, you know. You’d be marked down as a consultant. Then you could get that repaired.” She nodded to the water damage in the far, shadowed corner.

“Miss Anthea, I’ve had a very long day and--“

“Anthea,” she interrupted, her voice steely. Greg blinked when confronted with her sharp, freezing glare. “Just Anthea.”

“Sorry,” he said immediately, and her gaze dropped. “Anthea. I had a long day. I’d like to go to bed. Please get to the point so I can say no thank you and we can both move on.”

The iron determination only solidified. Greg managed to stifle a groan.

“There are other considerations,” Anthea said after a pause. “You do realise that, if you can erase psychic suggestions, other people must be able to do it as well.”

“So why can’t you go and bother one of them?”

Her wings bunched up higher and suddenly flared out, still thick and dark, before curling in to touch the mug. It lifted easily, her hands still folded on the table, and touched her lips; he watched, entranced, as her aura manipulated it into a gentle tilt, as easily as anyone else would use their hands, so that she could sip.

“You can see that without focusing,” she said, after setting the mug back down to the table top, never once moving her hands. 

Greg, who had rarely seen a psychic use their material ability in such a controlled fashion (in fact, the only time he had seen a psychic move an object with his aura alone, the man was caught in a panic attack and was flinging things about wildly), nodded without really hearing her.

Anthea sighed, her wings settling back to their habitual fluff around her shoulders. “I have to concentrate to see auras,” she admitted, extending one long, red-nailed finger to tap her mug. “Or be very, very sleepy. It’s one or the other; nothing in between.”

“I still don’t see why you can’t bother someone else,” Greg said flatly.

“You’re the only person we know who can do something like this, in actuality rather than potentially. So just come and show us; rather, show Mr. Holmes.” Her gaze was level. “Just once. He’ll figure it out from there.”

“Why cut me loose if he meant to send you ‘round the very next night?” Greg demanded.

“Because he tried to figure out what you’d done based on a study of your aura, of course,” Anthea said simply, and raised an eyebrow at him when he made a strange noise. “Are you all right?”

Greg waved his arm, unable to find words. “What the hell are you people?” he settled on at last, and knocked his mug off the table--

\--where Anthea caught it, in midair, with one lovely, curving wing.

“You could learn to do this, you know,” she said, setting it on the table again. Greg stared at it dully.

*********


	3. Chapter 3

*********

The material process, by that particular phrasing, began life as a sort of zine in the sixties. Seditious material, Greg thought sourly. There were copies in national archives, a few in museums now where no one could touch them. The idea being that, if no one remembered the material process, then they couldn’t learn it.

“Also if they managed to kill off all the psychics,” he muttered, then shook himself. Right. Thinking about history was not concentrating on the present, or the coffee cup.

Anthea was gone, disappointed once again. There had been a sort of edge to her aura at the end of it; Greg had a somewhat terrifying suspicion that Mycroft might descend from his tower to coerce Greg’s cooperation next. 

But that was the future, and only a possible one, at that. Focus.

It was his own mug, not the one Anthea had used. Brown, a bit shiny, taller at the top than at the bottom. A sleekly rounded handle, the curved edges of it lighter than the rest of the mug.

With a delicate lift and a bit of a stretch, Greg was able to bring his aura, still shaping itself as a wing, to settle its point on the handle, with a sensation of cinnamon and chalk dust. 

He was trying to ignore the feel of the somewhat stale air of his flat, the way the tip of his nose was itching, just because he was trying to focus. The mug. It had nothing he could really get a grip on; there was no aura here. Just the sensations of cinnamon and chalk dust, scratching dully and unnerving along the energy that made up the reaching winged presence of his aura, his sensitive self.

Scratching until he shuddered violently, flinging his wings back and wide, brushing them through the air to rid them of the heavy, chalky feel.

“Christ,” he said aloud, leaning back in his chair and wincing, then, at the dusty feeling of the wood. Grainier and less yellow, but still unwelcome.

Usually, physical objects didn’t create too much of a sensation in his aura, much less so if they weren’t actively moving through it; this attempt to concentrate, to feel the material world, had woken him up to these itching, intrusive perceptions. Greg rubbed at his face, then rubbed his palms along the table, letting his body take over the task of sensing the material world.

He didn’t know how material psychics managed--although it did explain, perhaps, why he more often saw their wings as bunched, where his were long and streaming.

But the sensation was more than enough. Imagine actually working that sensation around to grasping, to lifting--

Greg shuddered again, and got up from his chair, moving with some determination for the shower. Anthea’s temptation no longer seemed a temptation at all. He wasn’t made for moving objects with his aura, that was clear.

*********

A few hours later, with barely a moment snatched of sleep, Greg was heading to a hotel in Camden, fueled only by coffee and a stale bagel that probably ought to have been binned last week. But he’d make do, and maybe get some shopping done later in the day, God willing.

It didn’t seem that God was all that willing once he got there, though. Even unflappable Sally was a little green in the face. “Mutilation,” she said succinctly, nodding to the door. Greg made his way around the personnel photographing and finger-printing and otherwise securing the crime scene until he saw the man.

Shirtless, lying on his back, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. A huge, gaping hole in his chest.

Anderson was at his side. “They dumped him here,” he said, “after they removed his sternum.”

“That’s a bone,” Greg said, taking a step closer. There were marks on his chest above and below the hole, showing where he had been restrained. Marks on his wrists as well.

“Yes. They took the body of the sternum, and the xiphoid process--that’s the bit that hangs off the body,” Anderson clarified, at Greg’s look. “They left the manubrium. That’s the bit where the clavicle attaches.”

“So they actually--” Greg gestured to his own chest. “They broke it off, while it was inside him?”

“Looks like it.” Anderson shook his head, staring down at the body. “Maybe some kind of back alley surgery gone wrong. God knows.”

Greg went back out into the hallway, where Sally was talking quietly with a PC who had been interviewing the patrons in the neighbouring rooms, who had long been transferred away from the scene. “No one heard a thing,” she reported. “Room was supposed to be vacant, though there are no signs of breaking in. And we’ve yet to make an ID.”

“Keep at it,” Greg said with a sigh. “Manager in his office?”

“Her office,” Sally corrected, “and yeah. Good luck with that one.” At Greg’s raised eyebrow, she added, “This is HER hotel.”

“Can’t keep a lid on murder,” Greg said with mock cheeriness, heading for the lift.

“She’s trying!” Sally called back.

Miriam Belgard was a tall woman with very long, very red nails, only made redder by the paleness of her skin stretched tight over her fists. “I can assure you, security is one of our top priorities,” she snapped at Greg. “The key cards for room four twenty-three were found at the front desk, where they belong, and your officers witnessed the concierge take them from their locked cabinet!”

“Ms. Belgard--”

“And the cameras show that no one removed them from the cabinet!” she continued, shaking with fury. “No one could have gotten into that room through the door!”

“So you’re suggesting they came in through the window?” Greg asked politely.

Belgard’s mouth hung open for a moment. “I-- have you inspected the windows?”

Greg didn’t allow his expression to change a jot. “The windows overlooking the street, ma’am? Yes, the forensics team is working on it.” He managed a smile. “Now, perhaps you can tell us who had that room last?”

Her aura was a faint sort of pinkish cloud, surprisingly cold and sharp for its soft colour. She was shocked, yes, but also incensed; she was absolutely furious that someone had left a dead body in her hotel. 

Which meant she, at least, was not a suspect in Greg’s eyes.

They were still patiently interviewing the night shift cleaning staff when Greg left, after speaking to the maid who had discovered the body. He allowed the details to fall to the back of his brain, where maybe they would jumble together into some new theory. 

Meanwhile, Annie had texted, letting him know she would be back home tonight.

“I hope Anthea gives it a rest, then,” Greg murmured, considering a Tesco run. He had a feeling they needed everything, but was sure he would somehow remember to buy only the few things they actually still had if he didn’t go home and make a list.

Fuck it. He’d go home, write up a list, check in at the office, and get some shopping done. Maybe do a bit of jogging. Exhaust himself enough that he could resist the now almost overwhelming impulse to call Annie out. Even if he hadn’t been sensitive, he’d have known. She wasn’t trying all that hard to hide it; hell, she probably wanted to be found out.

“Oh, good, you’re back.”

Greg let the front door shut behind him as he stared, nonplussed, at the young man in the suit lounging against the far wall in the sitting room. “I’m sorry, was I expecting you?” he asked, shrugging off his overcoat.

The young man tilted his head to either side. “Well, no. Not exactly. But you should have expected something, involved with the Holmeses as you are.”

“Oh, come on,” Greg said to the ceiling, then gestured peremptorily toward the door. “Enough. I told Anthea I wasn’t interested, all right? Go back and tell Mycroft I said to fuck off.”

“You see, that’s the problem,” the man said, smiling with polite helplessness. He shrugged, still leaning against the wall. “I need you to work with Mycroft. I can’t do it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Greg said, but it was autopilot. Some instinct, some subconscious screaming part of him, was demanding that he run. And then Greg saw why.

Huge, swooping, thick, dark wings, in a lustrous red so dark it might as well be black, swept from out the wall, through the walls, surrounding him. Greg made one abortive move to back away and felt them close behind him--behind him, and through his own aura.

He heard the crash before he realised he’d fallen to his knees. Something like pain, something viscous and inky, filled his mind. He could see, as if through a funhouse mirror, his hands on the floor, holding him up from miles away.

His brain was burning, but his body was very, very cold.

“I don’t know much about you, Detective Inspector Lestrade,” the man said with a theatrical regret. Greg’s ears were ringing, his own harsh breathing dominating what little he could hear beyond that, but his whole body seemed to perceive the man’s words. They wrote themselves in flame in his mind’s eye. “But Mister Holmes the elder seems to find you fascinating. Worth recruiting. And that’s a rare thing.”

“Oh?” Greg choked out, and felt like a vise was closing around his head.

“You don’t seem all that interesting to me.” This was said in a dead sort of voice, flat and uninterested and still fire in his mind. “Twenty-some years an officer, wife who wants out, no children to speak of, no pets to lighten the home. Ah, sweet, stultifying mundanity. To think that someone like you should be psychic. It’s offensive.”

The last was said with an acidic anger, the vise tightening so much that Greg felt the pressure give in his nose, and blood splashed out onto the rug.

“But that’s neither here nor there,” the man said, almost in a singsong. He grabbed Greg’s chin and pulled his head up,;his face, innocent and sweet, was twisted into an expression of concern. “Are you all right, there, Inspector?”

He couldn’t answer to save his life. 

“I need a favour,” the man said, crouched just in front of Greg’s shivering, wretched form. “I am, eventually, going to need access to Baskerville, among other things. I have an idea, you see, but my experiments aren’t... they aren’t going as well as I’d hoped. So that’s where you come in.”

He sat down, cross-legged, on the floor. Then the vise feeling extended from Greg’s head to his entire body, every nerve screaming in agony, as he, too, moved to sit. 

“I’m told that hurts,” the man said, and patted Greg’s arm. “Don’t take it personally. I just need you to sit still for the next bit.”

The next bit. If he could concentrate past the pain, he’d be trying to swallow his own tongue.

“I don’t know how much you know about the material process right now, but...”

His eyes, streaming with tears from the pressure in his head, were nevertheless able to make out the thin steel blade.

“I want this to go deep, so I’m going to give it a little help,” the man said, smiling as Greg’s hands, aching as he fought the command, were made to remove his tie and unbutton his shirt.

“Don’t worry. I’m an old hand at this--and you won’t even remember. I promise.”

*********

“Are you here?” Annie shouted from the front, and Greg stepped out of the kitchen, smiling in spite of himself. Because Annie was still lovely, and he still loved her, in spite of everything.

“Yeah, just putting the shopping away,” he said, and accepted her quick kiss on the cheek. “How’s Mum?”

“Wonderful,” she declared, already past him and inspecting the apples he’d bought. “So no case? You should’ve come with me.”

Greg shook his head, smiling past the feeling of acid in his throat. She always extended that invitation after the fact. “I do, actually, have one. And it’s going to be--” he hesitated, but he’d already decided, hadn’t he? “It’s going to take up a few of my evenings.”

There was no darkening of her aura, though she did manage a frown for him. “Oh, really? But I’ve only just come home!”

She’ll ask for a divorce within the month, Greg thought suddenly, his chest throbbing with a sudden, sharp ache. No point in holding back from what he wanted to do, then.

“The murderers aren’t taking the night off, so neither can I,” he said, with a delicate shrug. Annie tsked and set to work putting food away, her aura only brightening.

A few more evenings in which she wouldn’t have to face him; a few nights she wouldn’t have to pretend she didn’t mind it was Greg getting in her bed. He should be asking for a divorce. This sitting around, waiting on her, was starting to kill him.

He rubbed at his chest absently and winced as it stung.

“Let me at least make you dinner before you leave,” Annie said, her tone apologetic and soft.

“Thanks,” Greg said, and managed something approximating a real smile.

*********


End file.
